"Fireballs of doom" from a quantum phase change would wipe out present Universe.

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Ohio State's Christopher Hill joked he was showing scenes of an impending i-Product launch, and it was easy to believe him: young people were setting up mats in a hallway, ready to spend the night to secure a space in line for the big reveal. Except the date was July 3 and the location was CERN—where the discovery of the Higgs boson would be announced the next day.

It's clear the LHC worked as intended and has definitively identified a Higgs-like particle. Hill put the chance of the ATLAS detector having registered a statistical fluke at less than 10-11, and he noted that wasn't even considering the data generated by its partner, the CMS detector. But is it really the one-and-only Higgs and, if so, what does that mean? Hill was part of a panel that discussed those questions at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

As theorist Joe Lykken of Fermilab pointed out, the answers matter. If current results hold up, they indicate the Universe is currently inhabiting what's called a false quantum vacuum. If it were ever to reach the real one, its existing structures (including us), would go away in what Lykken called "fireballs of doom."

We'll look at the less depressing stuff first, shall we?

Zeroing in on the Higgs

Thanks to the Standard Model, we were able to make some very specific predictions about the Higgs. These include the frequency with which it will decay via different pathways: two gamma-rays, two Z bosons (which further decay to four muons), etc. We can also predict the frequency of similar looking events that would occur if there were no Higgs. We can then scan each of the decay pathways (called channels), looking for energies where there is an excess of events, or bump. Bumps have shown up in several channels in roughly the same place in both CMS and ATLAS, which is why we know there's a new particle.

But we still don't know precisely what particle it is. The Standard Model Higgs should have a couple of properties: it should be scalar and should have a spin of zero. According to Hill, the new particle is almost certainly scalar; he showed a graph where the alternative, pseudoscalar, was nearly ruled out. Right now, spin is less clearly defined. It's likely to be zero, but we haven't yet ruled out a spin of two. So far, so Higgs-like.

The Higgs is the particle form of a quantum field that pervades our Universe (it's a single quantum of the field), providing other particles with mass. In order to do that, its interactions with other particles vary—particles are heavier if they have stronger interactions with the Higgs. So, teams at CERN are sifting through the LHC data, checking for the strengths of these interactions. So far, with a few exceptions, the new particle is acting like the Higgs, although the error bars on these measurements are rather large.

As we said above, the Higgs is detected in a number of channels and each of them produces an independent estimate of its mass (along with an estimated error). As of the data Hill showed, not all of these estimates had converged on the same value, although they were all consistent within the given errors. These can also be combined mathematically for a single estimate, with each of the two detectors producing a value. So far, these overall estimates are quite close: CMS has the particle at 125.8GeV, Atlas at 125.2GeV. Again, the error bars on these values overlap.

Oops, there goes the Universe

That specific mass may seem fairly trivial—if it were 130GeV, would you care? Lykken made the argument you probably should. But he took some time to build to that.

Lykken pointed out, as the measurements mentioned above get more precise, we may find the Higgs isn't decaying at precisely the rates we expect it to. This may be because we have some details of the Standard Model wrong. Or, it could be a sign the Higgs is also decaying into some particles we don't know about—particles that are dark matter candidates would be a prime choice. The behavior of the Higgs might also provide some indication of why there's such a large excess of matter in the Universe.

But much of Lykken's talk focused on the mass. As we mentioned above, the Higgs field pervades the entire Universe; the vacuum of space is filled with it. And, with a value for the Higgs mass, we can start looking into the properties of the Higgs filed and thus the vacuum itself. "When we do this calculation," Lykken said, "we get a nasty surprise."

It turns out we're not living in a stable vacuum. Eventually, the Universe will reach a point where the contents of the vacuum are the lowest energy possible, which means it will reach the most stable state possible. The mass of the Higgs tells us we're not there yet, but are stuck in a metastable state at a somewhat higher energy. That means the Universe will be looking for an excuse to undergo a phase transition and enter the lower state.

What would that transition look like? In Lykken's words, again, "fireballs of doom will form spontaneously and destroy the Universe." Since the change would alter the very fabric of the Universe, anything embedded in that fabric—galaxies, planets, us—would be trashed during the transition. When an audience member asked "Are the fireballs of doom like ice-9?" Lykken replied, "They're even worse than that."

Lykken offered a couple of reasons for hope. He noted the outcome of these calculations is extremely sensitive to the values involved. Simply shifting the top quark's mass by two percent to a value that's still within the error bars of most measurements, would make for a far more stable Universe.

And then there's supersymmetry. The news for supersymmetry out of the LHC has generally been negative, as various models with low-mass particles have been ruled out by the existing data (we'll have more on that shortly). But supersymmetry actually predicts five Higgs particles. (Lykken noted this by showing a slide with five different photos of Higgs taken at various points in his career, in which he was "differing in mass and other properties, as happens to all of us.") So, when the LHC starts up at higher energies in a couple of years, we'll actually be looking for additional, heavier versions of the Higgs.

If those are found, then the destruction of our Universe would be permanently put on hold. "If you don't like that fate of the Universe," Lykken said, "root for supersymmetry"

130 Reader Comments

Well, if we had the capability to "jump" across space, and get inside the shockwave, lets say 5 billion years after it first occurs, somewhere within that shockwave would be a habitable zone, right? And if we could feasibly jump the shockwave, we could possibly have ways to create the matter we would need for survival.

I don't think you're understanding that, inside the bubble, the Universe no longer has fundamental physics that support the existence of matter as we know it. We would be destroyed.

So the "new" universe would not be the same as the old one, ever, at any point in time? The physics would never match up, ever?

It's possible to locally deflect the phase transition if you somehow happened to have a way of pushing energy into the Higgs field. Much like a pond could freeze, but the spot around a spring stays liquid due to the turbulence. The only instance I know of intentionally pushing a significant amount of energy into the Higgs field was the LHC itself. (My understanding is that they sloshed the field hard enough for some of it to quantize into particle-like behavior.)

So, if the LHC or its successor is running at the time of the fireballs of doom, the collider's target area would last a little longer than other parts of Earth. But only a little, since the power source would not be protected.

Cool to think about and maybe write about, but not so much a possibility.

So basically, the universes that may have come before, and ones that may yet exist in the future, the physics of each are not interchangeable? They would be incompatible? For example, in our universe, the higgs is around 125GeV, but in the next it would have a value higher, and everything else as well?

Would something from this universe, put into the next universe (hypothetical) take on those characteristics, or would it try to retain its own characteristics, and be destroyed? Or is this something we do not currently know?

That's impossible to say. To our current knowledge, the parameters of the Universe appear random. They may actually have a deeper explanation.

Would it be possible to indefinitely run away from the "Fireballs of Doom" with the Alcubierre Drive?

If they started happening everywhere randomly and in limited amounts, constantly expanding. . would we be safe at the edge of the ever expanding Universe?

The Universe is expanding at less than light speed (since the end of inflation), so you would eventually run out of places to hide. Imagine trying to outrun a shockwave galloping across the Earth's surface. You'd eventually run into the far side of the same shockwave, or find the antipodal point and be fried from all directions at once.

Perhaps you could run from the shockwave until what was within the shockwave was relatively stable, then hop inside of it? How long after the big bang until the universe was as we need it to be?

"Hopping over it" would require leaving the Universe and re-entering, which sounds more like a Doctor Who episode than a real plan. Seriously, at least the Second Doctor and the Eleventh Doctor have done it.

Note that the phase transition just changes the Universe, it doesn't destroy it. But to use a different analogy, if you were a fish and the ocean suddenly froze solid, you probably wouldn't enjoy it.

This whole story sounds like something Davros and the Daleks would've cooked up.

The second doctor was my favorite. I have the fourth doctor's scarf somewhere...

This is Great News! When the Universe collapses there will be another big bang. That means the Universe pulses, that means it's Eternal. Since information is never lost, each version of the Universe could create another level of complexity that interacts with all others. It could explain dimensionality. Each version of the Universe adding complexity to the information from the last one. Perhaps the first Universe was one dimensional, but successive Universes created more and future Universes will be even more complex!

It wouldn't necessarily mean it is eternal, since we do not know where the new universe is before it becomes the new universe. If there is a finite amount of energy beyond the veil, it would run out eventually. If it did run out, would that be a forthcoming heat-death, or something else entirely? It would be nice to think that the entire thing, our universe and beyond, could somehow recycle once it reached such a state, if such a state is possible. If it was not, wouldn't that mean we live in a, I don't even know what to call it now, infinite place, filled with infinite everything?

I also (meaning we agree, I'm more replaying to cafenitro but you brought up good points hence quoting you quoting him) think it is misguided to think of it as cyclical in the manner of the 'big bang -> slowly decelerating growth -> accelerating contraction -> big crunch -> next big bang, etc' model that was in vogue for a while last century before the discoveries of:

A. The existence at all of dark energyB. The balance of matter/dark matter/energy/dark energyC. Accelerating redshift hence accelerating expansionD. Topology of spacetime

The old big bang to crunch to new bang model would have been truly cyclical, but there's no reason to expect that the phase change would produce a 'new' universe at all, since it's simply the old one albeit modified in probably near infitnite ways. Furthermore, it doesn't address heat death and accelerating pace of expansion other than as potential triggers.

And, even if it *did* produce a 'new big bang' somehow, which is unlikely, there's no reason to think that the strong, electroweak, and gravitational forces would have values comparable to those in our universe's current quantum state, and even small alterations, minute almost infinitesimal alterations at that, to the values of those forces would produce universes completely unlike our own, where atoms couldn't form, or atoms could form but chemistry or electromagnetism wouldn't function as we know it, disabling any currently recognizable form of chemistry/chemical interactions, thus preventing molecules from forming.

And it goes on and on. The result would not be 'fireballs of doom' in any literal sense, and the universe post-shift would likely be completely incomprehensible to us, perhaps not even having the same physical forces we have at all.

So basically, the universes that may have come before, and ones that may yet exist in the future, the physics of each are not interchangeable? They would be incompatible?

I think that's probably right.

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For example, in our universe, the higgs is around 125GeV, but in the next it would have a value higher, and everything else as well?

Or there might be no Higgs at all.

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Would something from this universe, put into the next universe (hypothetical) take on those characteristics, or would it try to retain its own characteristics, and be destroyed?

Probably. I (for what little it's worth) presently think that this is almost certainly the case.

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Or is this something we do not currently know?

But this is the case. I think that these are really excellent, big, questions. I think they can be boiled down as something like "where do the laws of physics come from?" Is there underlying structure "below" what we currently theorize and if so is there anything below that... and to use the cliché: is it turtles all the way down?

Could Dark Energy be the result of the Higg's field transitioning towards its lowest stable state?

The description of the Higg's reaching it's lowest stable state, sure sounds a lot like the "Big Rip" description of the end of the universe caused by Dark Energy. Both Dark Energy and the Higg's field permeate space, and are tied to our understanding of gravity.

Well, if we had the capability to "jump" across space, and get inside the shockwave, lets say 5 billion years after it first occurs, somewhere within that shockwave would be a habitable zone, right? And if we could feasibly jump the shockwave, we could possibly have ways to create the matter we would need for survival.

I don't think you're understanding that, inside the bubble, the Universe no longer has fundamental physics that support the existence of matter as we know it. We would be destroyed.

And not only would we be destroyed, we almost certainly couldn't even *exist* within the area that has changed phase, because the most tame result would be at a minimum changes to the values of the strong nuclear force, electroweak force, and gravity, not to mention the Higgs field itself.

That means that matter as we know it wouldn't be able to exist, as even small changes to any of those three forces, not even taking into account the Higgs field, molecules, even atoms.. hell even protons and neutrons or even quarks couldn't exist.

That's the tame end of things. The wild side of things is that it's possible that the strong, electroweak, and gravitational forces wouldn't even exist and instead there would be other forces that we cannot even speculate upon in their stead.

Also somebody asked if the universe expands at light speed. The answer is that the universe itself, being infinite, cannot 'grow' in the sense of blowing up a balloon to make it bigger. However, the fabric of space itself is expanding, though the term fabric is a gross simplification though it's a useful analogy I will use. So as the fabric of space expands and that expansion accelerates, objects located in relation to one another move with it, though as relativity states nothing has absolute position, position only being meaningful in relation to another object. So thus since position only relates one object to another, the two objects may appear to be moving apart superluminally, meaning faster than the speed of light, from the vantage point of either object. The trick is that neither is moving superluminally: the fabric of space is expanding and the objects 'embedded' in spacetime, that being another terrible oversimplification, move with the fabric.

As the speed of expansion accelerates eventually the objects will appear to be moving apart at superluminal speeds.

To illustrate this point, imagine that you're on a planet in the far future. Slowly one by one the stars will go out, disappearing. This is because the fabric of space is moving apart so quickly and accelerating that speed of spread so mightily that they appear to be moving away from you at light speed. Thus light from said stars will not be able to 'keep up' with the expanding fabric of space because of the speed limit of our universe, the speed of that light itself, is still traveling at light speed but space is moving your imaginary planet and the stars that emit that light apart so fast that the light travels slower than the expansion, and thus cannot reach said imaginary planet.

Make sense? Hah probably not, I'm no good at teacher stuff, but maybe that pretend analogy will help explain the seemingly superluminal speeds encountered in the universe trillions of years from now by showing them to be artifacts of perception caused by the expansion of space.

The old big bang to crunch to new bang model would have been truly cyclical, but there's no reason to expect that the phase change would produce a 'new' universe at all, since it's simply the old one albeit modified in probably near infitnite ways. Furthermore, it doesn't address heat death and accelerating pace of expansion other than as potential triggers.

And, even if it *did* produce a 'new big bang' somehow, which is unlikely, there's no reason to think that the strong, electroweak, and gravitational forces would have values comparable to those in our universe's current quantum state, and even small alterations, minute almost infinitesimal alterations at that, to the values of those forces would produce universes completely unlike our own, where atoms couldn't form, or atoms could form but chemistry or electromagnetism wouldn't function as we know it, disabling any currently recognizable form of chemistry/chemical interactions, thus preventing molecules from forming.

And it goes on and on. The result would not be 'fireballs of doom' in any literal sense, and the universe post-shift would likely be completely incomprehensible to us, perhaps not even having the same physical forces we have at all.

Not a physicist, but this gave me an idea: If everything in the Universe got orders of magnitude more massive, wouldn't that cause a collapse and ultimately a Big Crunch? All the in-falling stuff changes the quantum state again, and viola! the next Big Bang. The 'next' Universe would be built out of the rubble of the old one, and since information can't be destroyed (unless you are talking to Stephen Hawking), it becomes the entropy for the next Cosmic Egg.

That entropy might drive the physics of the next Universe. Some cycles would the anthropic, some xenotropic, others would just be a lifeless pause waiting for the next cycle. The time-like length of each Universe could be radically different (if one could agree on a single frame of reference). Kind of a serial version of the Many Worlds idea.

When string theorists can come up with a testable hypothesis, then we'll be able to tell whether any particular experimental results support or contradict String Theory. Until then, it's all just mathematical masturbation.

Just loving how people would rather down-vote than discuss why the down-voted comment is incorrect...

Your other post looks like ignorant anti-science trolling, comparing rigorous science to Mayan Doomsday bullshit. I did not personally downvote it, but I understand why people did. But, since it appears that you're in something resembling good faith, I'll answer.

The Higgs vacuum's meta-stability at this mass, which is what the article's all about, is a very standard and well-known (since the 70s), accepted consequence of the Standard Model, if there is no other new physics that intervenes. This isn't wild speculation, and the statement that a 2% different top quark mass throws things off should have shown you that it's quantifiable. At the same time, I don't think anyone with a PhD in the subject thinks the Standard Model is the correct theory of nature all the way up to the Planck scale, the scale at which quantum gravity, the small-scale structure of space itself, becomes important. So, it's discussed in a kind of tongue-in-cheek way ("Hey guys, it's proof that God exists because the Higgs vacuum should have decayed already, since we all know the SM is correct, right? Right?") and as evidence that there's probably something out there preventing the Higgs from doing this.

I suppose I should add how to phrase your same question in a way that gets answers and not downvotes:

"This seems a bit like Mayan Doomsday speculative hype to me. Is this a broadly accepted result, or just some theorist's speculation?" minus the dismissive remarks about scientific progress and "zOMG".

For all the people talking about how there could be other universes with other physical laws, the correct answer is "we have no idea".

We keep exploring deeper and deeper into the underlying mechanisms of the universe.

When we finally get down to the bottom turtle, we might find that only specific turtles in specific orders are able to stand on its back. Or we might find no reason to believe there would be constraints as to which turtle stands on its back

But until we understand those underlying mechanisms better, it's all just guessing. Some people think universes with other physical laws might be possible. But considering those people have no idea how the physical laws of our universe developed, they are basically talking out of their collective rear-ends.

EDIT: Don't get me wrong. It's interesting to think about. And the job of theoretical physicists is to theorize about things. But just be careful of the level of certainty/understanding that is applied to such thought.

Just loving how people would rather down-vote than discuss why the down-voted comment is incorrect...

Your other post looks like ignorant anti-science trolling, comparing rigorous science to Mayan Doomsday bullshit. I did not personally downvote it, but I understand why people did. But, since it appears that you're in something resembling good faith, I'll answer.

It wasn't meant as trolling. I'm having somewhat of a bad day, so I suppose that leaked into my tone a bit. It was intended as partially humorous but asking a serious question, e.g. is "flaming doom" a real thing or is this scientist just overexaggerating, or as the rest of your answer states, something else completely. I suppose, in the long run, I should just stay out of QM comments as it just seems to be beyond my comprehension. The short version is that I don't understand how a tiny fluctuation in a subatomic particle which itself is so tiny we can only theorize on its existence can set the universe on fire.

Now, if somebody can find me a way to the universe where I can watch and bring marshmellows, I'm all good. I just get really tired of hearing doomsday theories which are ill-informed and blown way out of proportion.

Just loving how people would rather down-vote than discuss why the down-voted comment is incorrect...

If you mean this one, I didn't down-vote it but I did think it was pretty troll-y...

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Until three months from now, when we discover that we're off by a marginal factor which makes the End Of The Universe clock change from 10^9 to 10^18, and then a year after that when another physicist discovers that the Higgs can undergo a change in state without destroying everything but has a 15% chance of causing zombie-like behavior, but will probably just result in everybody hearing a pleasant humming sound which will for some reason double the reproductive rate among three-toed sloths for fifteen years.

I mean, really. We just got rid of the whole Mayan thing, and have mostly defrayed the killer asteroid thing, so a scientist comes up with yet another difficult-to-explain zOMG Universal Apocalypse? Can he actually quantify this finding or is it just him thinking "what's the absolute worst case scenario even if it's a dramatic improbability?"

Nobody went out of his or her way to find an "absolute worst case scenario". This is simply the physics of it. Under the Standard Model, if the Higgs has a mass around where it currently stands then the Higgs field isn't in its lowest energy state - but like everything else wants to be. The process of transitioning to that state will result in the release of an immense amount of energy and change the effect that the Higgs field has on other particles (vastly, unimaginably, increasing their masses). And since the Higgs field is everywhere, this process will spread everywhere. I think what a lot of people find particularly interesting about this is how close the Higgs mass seems to be to the dividing line between a stable and quasi-stable Higgs field and that this might be more than a coincidence and in fact point to new physics.

I suppose, in the long run, I should just stay out of QM comments as it just seems to be beyond my comprehension. The short version is that I don't understand how a tiny fluctuation in a subatomic particle which itself is so tiny we can only theorize on its existence can set the universe on fire.

This I can answer. Electrons and protons may be tiny, but I think you'd agree that a significant change in their properties would dramatically alter large scale stuff. You've probably heard the "Higgs gives mass to fundamental particles" story. The essence of the situation is that the electron's mass m looks like this:

m = y * V

where V is the average value of the Higgs field and y is a "Yukawa coupling", some constant, the origin of which currently has no explanation. The Higgs field is special in that its average value is not 0, unlike the electromagnetic field and all other quantum fields.

It turns out that, right now in our Universe, V is something like 350,000 times the mass of an electron, so y is something like 1/350,000. Whatever. But what if V were to change dramatically, by a factor of many trillions? Then the electron's little y would still be there, but all of a sudden V is 350 quadrillion, and the mass of all electrons in this region of space where V is 350 quadrillion is a trillion times what it used to be. The same basic thing happens to protons in a more complicated way, which completely screws up the structure of matter.

So, it's a change in the properties of a Higgs field, something that fills the Universe, that ruins everything. It turns out that, at the value of mass the Higgs has, the Standard Model believes that the Higgs field would prefer to have V = 350 quadrillion, not 350,000, but in the early Universe got stuck in this less-stable state.

I think I follow, in a plants crave electrolytes sort of way. Thank you for the clarifications. Not so much a universe dies in a blaze of quantum fireballs, more along the lines of the Higgs bricking the firmware that regulates matter.

Excepted for Albert Einstein, we all know this for fact our universe is expanding, everything is moving in the same direction. I'll give you an example of how this is exactly what's happening to our universe. First of all, find a large size of trash bag you can get. Medium size may be okay too, if you want to see our universe died quicker. Tied up the trash bag opening to a vacuum host. Hand held or floor model it doesn't matter. Turn on the vacuum on a super slow speed. #10 at the dial?

Now you should be witnessing the trash bag slowly collapsing and it appeared flattening. The air in the trash bag is sucking out by the vacuum a bit by bit until all the air in the trash bag got sucked out. You can now watch what the trash bag looks like. Two piece of plastic pasted together inseparable. Just like the trash bag and this is what's going to happen to our universe. There will be no fireballs of doom. No explosion, no boom, no bang, no black holes....

We just run out of air.

This is Evolution Theory.

I know this sounds a bit funny the way I described it but you know I am not too far off, right? :-D

I know this sounds a bit funny the way I described it but you know I am not too far off, right?

Not far off. No cigar but not far off.

Here's different model of cosmology that's not far off. We're all living in a big fishbowl and the end of the Universe happens when a Labrador retriever whacks the fishbowl with his tail and the entire Universe crashes to the floor and explodes into a million little pieces scattering us all over the the Aubusson rug, then the owner of the Lab has to pay to have it cleaned.

The Higgs is the particle form of a quantum field that pervades our Universe (it's a single quantum of the field), providing other particles with mass. In order to do that, its interactions with other particles vary—particles are heavier if they have stronger interactions with the Higgs.

Thank you. That is the first time I have seen how the Higgs Boson actually works. Possibly because my eyes have glazed over too early while reading other articles.

Stephen Baxter's sci-fi short Last Contact is germane to this subject.

It's a fast, worthy read.

Also a rather depressing way to start the day.

Linking in with both Baxter's story and the 'fireballs of doom' - I favour end-of-the-world/universe scenarios where there's no advance warning, personally. I don't have enough faith in human nature to believe that any semblance of civilisation would last for long past any announcement of unavoidable doom...

Great article. Good to see those quantum physicists have a sense of humour too

I think the extinction of Homo sapiens will occur well before fireballs of doom. Sure, we're the number one species now, but once those dolphins grow opposable thumbs (or the sharks evolve lasers), we'll be a mere blink of the evolutionary eye

The Awesomeness (or quantum fireballs of doom), sounds right to me. Why should we care though? The second law of thermodynamics already has us stated to be doomed, entropy of our universe is always increasing so eventually nothing more will being going on, why not have the universe explode at that point? I'd plan it that way.

In fact I'm thinking I'm a horrible person because this makes me want to make up a plan and have governments pay to 'measure' some crazy universe property, but it's actually the domino that knocks the universe out of it's semi-stable state.

I know it's not going to make me famous destroying the universe, but I would do it... FOR SCIENCE!

This is Great News! When the Universe collapses there will be another big bang. That means the Universe pulses, that means it's Eternal. Since information is never lost, each version of the Universe could create another level of complexity that interacts with all others. It could explain dimensionality. Each version of the Universe adding complexity to the information from the last one. Perhaps the first Universe was one dimensional, but successive Universes created more and future Universes will be even more complex!

... this is poetry about science. Not science. It is a description of a sunset in words. I like it on those terms, without any illusions that I grasp the underlying cosmological reality that inspires the poet to express these interesting thoughts.

I suppose, in the long run, I should just stay out of QM comments as it just seems to be beyond my comprehension. The short version is that I don't understand how a tiny fluctuation in a subatomic particle which itself is so tiny we can only theorize on its existence can set the universe on fire.

This I can answer. Electrons and protons may be tiny, but I think you'd agree that a significant change in their properties would dramatically alter large scale stuff. You've probably heard the "Higgs gives mass to fundamental particles" story. The essence of the situation is that the electron's mass m looks like this:

m = y * V

where V is the average value of the Higgs field and y is a "Yukawa coupling", some constant, the origin of which currently has no explanation. The Higgs field is special in that its average value is not 0, unlike the electromagnetic field and all other quantum fields.

It turns out that, right now in our Universe, V is something like 350,000 times the mass of an electron, so y is something like 1/350,000. Whatever. But what if V were to change dramatically, by a factor of many trillions? Then the electron's little y would still be there, but all of a sudden V is 350 quadrillion, and the mass of all electrons in this region of space where V is 350 quadrillion is a trillion times what it used to be. The same basic thing happens to protons in a more complicated way, which completely screws up the structure of matter.

So, it's a change in the properties of a Higgs field, something that fills the Universe, that ruins everything. It turns out that, at the value of mass the Higgs has, the Standard Model believes that the Higgs field would prefer to have V = 350 quadrillion, not 350,000, but in the early Universe got stuck in this less-stable state.

Let's say that, at a point in space, the Higgs field undergoes the phase transition to the stabler, higher energy state. That is, a virtual Higgs quantum tunnels to the stabler energy state.

Why should this change propagate to the surrounding points in space? Why should the surrounding virtual Higgs imitate the first one? After all, the fact that a particle quantum tunnels doesn't increase the probability of adjacent particles doing the same.

If you read sci-fi classics, then you might remember James Blish's Cities in Flight tetralogy. Its concluding part was "The Triumph of Time". It fancied that our universe had a mirror anti-matter universe that was converging with ours and obliterating both. What to do? Well, we (or Blish) found a way to survive it. This is my favorite science fiction -- like Forbidden Planet, pure science fiction -- no space cowboys, space wars, space romance -- the only encounter is with the future itself.

Suppose the human race survives the billions of years it will take for Higgs instability to cause the Big Burnout. And suppose that if we avoid murdering each other, avoid getting wiped out by disease and manage get back to the business of being fruitful and multiplying instead of sitting around jerking off (which seems to be the preoccupation of the current era), then we'll have explored and settled at least the Local Group. What billions of years of evolution -- much of it in zero-gravity -- will make us is indeed the stuff of pure science fiction. Presumably, we'll still be conscious beings of some sort.

Anyway, I think that if we can survive and evolve to the point where if we can find a way to survive, say, a matter-anti-matter-universe collision, then we'll probably find a way to survive a Higgs catastrophe. So, let's cure the diseases of aging and dying, get out there, explore and populate the universe...and when that time comes, deal with it.

1) Maybe- more research needed. The idea is that the Higgs field has a low energy stable state that it now occupies, and if the Standard Model is correct, an even more stable state at very high energy, with a vast swath of instability in between. The Higgs field cannot classically transition between these two stable states, but it can get there through quantum tunneling with tiny probability. You'd artificially cause the change by lowering the instability of the in-between region, so that tunneling is more likely, in the same way a chemical reaction rate is increased by a catalyst. Difficult to imagine what that might be.

...

I want to add that this is nothing to worry about. If the Higgs mass were more like 120 GeV, this collapse would be imminent (assuming the SM is correct, and it probably isn't). If the Higgs mass were more like 130 GeV, this collapse would not happen (same assumption). At 125 GeV, we're right on the border region (same assumption), where we need to know the other parameters precisely in order to figure out exactly which state is more stable, and in any case they're so close that the expected time of vacuum collapse is so large as to be irrelevant.

Two questions: 1) you say the "new, higgs death state" is even more stable, but at very high energy. High energy FOR WHAT? The Higgs field, or the particles? That is, to go from a low energy state to a high energy state, requires energy to be input (at least to my way of thinking). So, is this a case of Higgs + energy = Death_Higgs? If so, where are the fireballs of doom coming from? I would think it would be a sudden freezing of everything as the Higgs sucked out all the energy. Or is ti a LOWER energy state, which releases energy upon being triggered (everything else seems to indicate that this is the right version) - if so, how is it defined as "at very high energy" compared to today? Just seems contradictory to me.

2) What about the mass at 120 GeV vs 130 GeV or 125 GeV is causing this instability? Is it a case of balance between 50 different parameters? A property of the weak force vs. strong force, etc?